The present invention generally relates to electrical power systems and, more particularly, to electrical power supplies for vehicles such as aircraft.
Electrical power supply systems for aircraft typically have a variety of redundancy requirements for the provision of electrical power for the aircraft's systems, which may include, for example, avionics, cabin environment, lights, and, with the advent of MEA (more electric architecture), flight controls and actuators. For example, it may be required to provide power from an emergency back up source in the event of a failure of a main power supply.
Some aircraft manufacturers have recently imposed a requirement for a secondary electrical power supply providing backup to a primary power supply to be galvanically isolated from the primary supply. Two power supplies can be galvanically isolated if, for example, they do not share a common ground, their power inputs are electrically isolated, and there is no mechanical connection between them. In addition, it may be required for two galvanically isolated power supplies on a circuit board to have some pre-specified physical separation distance or space between them.
As can be seen, there is a need for a power supply having a circuit topology that galvanically isolates the power inputs of the power supplies from one another.